


Four Ways Dan Rydell Has Never Been Kissed

by J (j_writes)



Category: Sports Night
Genre: 5 Things, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-01
Updated: 2011-08-01
Packaged: 2017-10-22 01:44:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_writes/pseuds/J
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...and one way he very well might have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Ways Dan Rydell Has Never Been Kissed

**1**

There were a lot of firsts that happened in that basement four houses down from where he grew up, and a lot of lasts, too, but he tried not to think of those.

His first cigarette, offered by Tyler’s brother Joe, who was the one that got them into everything, really. Joe was a cool kid, at least he was in those days before Dan was old enough to realize that Joe probably should have had friends of his own to be hanging out with. But back then he was the coolest thing ever, and Dan tried his best to look cool too, as he sucked in hard and tried not to cough. It didn’t quite work, but he did better than Ty did. Damn kid looked like he was about to spit out a lung that first time.

His first drink too, Smirnoff stolen from the downstairs fridge. That was something Ty was better at, drinking. He was always a lot steadier than Dan, even when he’d had twice as much to drink. Must have been in the genes, because his parents were good at it too.

His first kiss happened there, too, although whenever anyone asked about it he said that it was Tammy Driscoll the night of his freshman semi. But the one he never talked about, his real first kiss, happened in that basement, just like everything else. New Year’s Eve the year that Dan was twelve and Ty was thirteen, and they had both been drinking, smoking, because that was what people did on holidays, wasn’t it?

They were sitting there on the floor, leaning back against the worn couch that smelled like dust and pot, and they were watching the people in Times Square, all hugging and kissing and jumping up and down, and he turned to Ty, planning to say something like _damn, don’t you wish we had some girls here?_

But Ty was already looking at him with this tiny little smile, looking young and shy, and when their lips touched it was almost an accident, except that it wasn’t at all.

 

 **2**

“Come over, Danny,” she said from his doorway, and he couldn’t for the life of him remember why he had left it open. Pounding music, drunken screams, the sounds of Saturday night in a dorm, and there she was leaning against the doorframe, looking like sex personified.

“I have some friends in my room, some drinks.” She smiled and in any other context he would have thought it was a sweet smile, innocent and young. But here, tonight, it was predatory.

He found that he didn’t mind being her prey.

She crossed the room, leaning against the back of his chair, peering over his shoulder at his computer. He quickly shut down his programs, feeling the heat of her breasts pressing against the back of his shirt. “Whatcha writing?” she asked, her fingers tripping lightly over his own on top of the keyboard.

“Not important,” he said, and found that it wasn’t. It had seemed important, twenty minutes ago, an hour ago, but now he had found a better way to escape and words were no longer a necessary part of it.

Their hands tangled together and he almost stood, almost followed her from the room, but instead he pulled her down into his lap and they stayed there, just on this side of the open doorway while outside people passed laughing and shouting down the hallway.

When he kissed her, she tasted like tequila and lime, and the faint hint of something minty.

In the morning she was gone, and he couldn’t remember her name.

 

 **3**

Casey came in wearing his fight face that morning and it was all downhill from there.

“They had a fight,” Dana called as she breezed by his office that morning, and he didn’t think anything of it until Casey appeared in the doorway, and there it was in all its glory. The face he wore when Lisa had spent most of the night ripping him a new one and then spent the morning making it a little bigger.

“You look like crap,” he said, barely glancing up from his computer, because that was the sort of thing that Casey would expect him to say, and he hated to disappoint.

“So do you,” Casey replied, because he knew his lines on bad days as well as good ones.

“No I don’t,” Dan said. “I look like a dashing specimen of masculinity, as I do every morning. You, on the other hand, look like you got run over by the Lisamobile.” He frowned. “Seriously, Casey, what happened? You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”

“I haven’t,” Casey said, slumping down on the couch. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

Dan raised an eyebrow. “The usual?”

“Which usual would that be?” Casey asked. “The _How dare you spend so many hours at that job of yours?_ one? Or _You haven’t even seen your son in three days! He’s going to grow up to be a serial killer, you know._ Or then there’s everyone’s favorite, _Why did we even move to this godforsaken state in the first place?_ So tell me, Dan, which usual are you referring to?”

He cringed. “I’m sorry, Case. I didn’t know it was that bad.”

Casey sighed. “Yes you did. Everyone knows. You think I don’t see the way Dana looks at me when I come in every morning? She’s trying to tell if I’m going to be a nightmare or not based on whether Lisa and I fought the night before.”

Dan nodded. “The Caseyometer.”

That shut him up for a moment. “She has a name for it?” He paused. “Of course she does. Look, I’m just…I’m tired, I’m frustrated, I need…” he shook his head. “I don’t know what I need.”

“You need a night out,” Dan decided. “That’s what you need. You need to go out and get drunk out of your mind and forget about Lisa for a while. Trust me, compared to the hangover you’ll have in the morning, Lisa will look like a day at the goddamn beach.”

Casey almost smiled. “Thanks, but no.”

“Why not?” he pressed. “Trust me, my friend. Dan knows all.”

This time he did smile. “I have no doubt that he does. But it’s…complicated, ok? You don’t get it. You’re not married.”

“No. I’m not. Which means that I can go out and get drunk any night I like without getting anyone’s permission.”

The smile disappeared as quickly as it had come. “Good, then why don’t you do that, and leave the rest of us to deal with our own problems?”

Dan raised an eyebrow. “Fine, thanks, I think I will,” he replied, frowning down at his computer, and he went back to work without another word.

And after an awkward day of stilted conversation and strained writing, he did.

It wasn’t the kind of bar he would have come to with Casey, because it wasn’t Casey’s kind of place. But it was loud, and smoky, and exactly what Dan needed. And when he felt a hand land on his leg, felt warm breath against his neck, he decided that he needed that too.

So he turned and let his hands slide into short hair slick with gel while another mouth met his in something that was more challenge than kiss. And when he felt strong fingers tugging at the back of his neck, pulling him closer, he tried not to imagine that they belonged to Casey.

It almost worked.

 

 **4**

He made sure there was no one in the room before he fished her number out of the trash, because there was really nothing less classy than a famous sports anchor on his hands and knees digging through the garbage.

Well, there were a few things less classy, but not many.

She answered on the first ring and he could tell by the way she said hello that she already knew it was him. “Someone bought the show” was all he said, and that was really all she needed to hear. They made plans to meet that night, somewhere other than Anthony’s because he didn’t want an audience. Casey would probably be mad that he wasn’t going to go out and celebrate with them, and Dana, and everyone else, come to think of it, but this was a chance he wasn’t likely to get again and he wasn’t going to blow it a second time.

The show flew by, and he felt exceptionally brilliant and witty, and beside him he could see Casey feeling the same way, and it was almost like that first night all over again, that first broadcast when they had sat down together behind the desk and made something happen.

The show wrapped up and he was out of there with barely a goodbye because he didn’t want to explain, not yet, not before anything was certain. That was the way you jinxed things.

Instead he hugged Natalie and Dana on his way out the door, and waved to Casey, who was watching him from across the room without making any signals that he had anything to say to him. He knew what this was about, even if no one else did.

The restaurant was crowded, but not uncomfortably so, and they were seated in a private corner away from the door. They sat and made small talk for a little while, the usual _what’s been going on in your life?_ conversations that had to be gotten out of the way before anything substantial could be discussed, and then she leaned across to take his hand all of a sudden, and there was something in her eyes that told him it was over before it had even begun.

“You would have gone,” she said, and he started to understand. “You were going to go across the country, and who’s to say that a year, two years, five years down the road you’re not going to get a better offer, and be faced with this again? Your career is your life, Dan, and I respect that, I really do, but I can’t live with it. I can’t deal with facing that kind of uncertainty all the time.”

So that was it, and he found that he couldn’t think of a defense because it was true. Maybe a year down the line he wouldn’t go, if he had her here to think of. But maybe he would. Maybe they would become Casey and Lisa, fighting all the time because he had dragged her across the country, away from everything she knew. So he didn’t argue, just watched as she stood and pulled on her coat.

As she passed by him on the way to the door, she leaned over to kiss him lightly on the cheek, and when she walked away he could feel the lingering dampness of her tears on his face.

 

 **5**

He woke to the feeling of warm breath against his skin, the sound of quiet snoring behind him. He kept his eyes closed for a moment, enjoying the heat of the arms around him and the soft fluttering of eyelashes against the back of his neck. He breathed in the scent of hotel sheets and Casey’s cologne and…

“Casey?”

“Mmmph?”

He sat up and one of Casey’s arms slid limply from his shoulders down to settle on his lap. His very naked, very interested lap.

A quick peek under the covers confirmed that Casey was equally naked, but much more asleep. This was not necessarily a comforting discovery, as he had no idea how they had gotten that way, or what they had done in that state.

Or indeed, what state they were in.

“Casey!” he repeated, louder this time, shaking Casey’s shoulder for emphasis and jiggling the arm in a not unpleasant fashion.

“Gnmbfmmk,” Casey told him, and rolled away to the other side of the bed, taking the blankets with him.

“Hey, look, coffee,” Dan said, and Casey came miraculously to life, rolling back over and looking up at him with sleepy eyes under adorably tousled hair.

He tried not to notice that he was suddenly starting to think of his coanchor in terms like _adorably tousled_.

“Coffee?” Casey asked, glancing around the room in befuddlement.

“No, I lied,” Dan told him, strategically arranging a pillow on his lap. “But there is nakedness. Do you have any idea why?”

Casey blinked slowly at him, then lifted the blankets to check. When he looked back up, his eyes were a lot bigger and more awake than before. “There is indeed,” he agreed, sitting up and propping himself against the headboard. “Exactly how much do you remember about last night?”

“Nothing,” he replied automatically, but then discovered that wasn’t entirely true. “No, wait. We’re in…” he paused. “We’re in Chicago!” he declared triumphantly. “For that…thing. That Isaac was getting. That awards thing.”

“Right, and after that, we all went out to…that bar,” Casey supplied.

“And Dana danced.”

“On the bar.” Casey groaned. “You do realize that she’s going to be unbearable today, don’t you? Humiliation always makes her unbearable.”

“Yes, but that’s ok, because I have no doubt that we will be unbearable as well.”

“True, but that’s nothing new for us.”

“Speaking of us…” Dan looked significantly down at the rumpled bed in which they were both still sitting, very naked.

“Yeah, about that.” Casey’s cheeks were suddenly turning a brilliant shade of pink.

“Aha!” Dan said triumphantly, poking Casey’s chest with a finger. “You remember something, don’t you?”

“I…remember Jagermeister…”

Dan blinked. “Jeremy.”

“Jeremy brought us Jagermeister,” Casey confirmed.

“Casey, did we…” he trailed off, suddenly getting a flash of memory. “We danced, didn’t we?”

“I believe we might have.”

“In the bar.”

“Yes.”

“Slowly, and very close together.”

Casey flinched. “I was hoping I had imagined that.”

Dan groaned and buried his face in his hands. “Our careers are over.”

“It’s looking like a distinct possibility.”

“We must find Jeremy and kill him, slowly and painfully, with many pointy objects.”

Casey raised an eyebrow. “That’s not what you were saying last night.”

“Well I think we can safely assume that I was not at my most rational last night, can’t we?”

“Well yes. But I do seem to recall you appointing him…Lord of the Dance, or something along those lines. Master of All Things Festive…something like that.”

“I think. I’m going to stay here. In this room. For the rest of my natural life. You, of course, are free to come and go as you please.”

“Speaking of this room…”

Dan closed his eyes. Desperate, fumbling kisses, back pressed up against the door. Fingers tripping over belt buckles, buttons ripping from shirts. Skin, soft skin touching him everywhere, and rough spikes of hair slipping through his fingers as he came, gasping Casey’s name…

“I remember.”

“Yeah.” Casey sounded a little dazed. “Me too.”

“We…”

“Yeah. We did.”

“And it was…”

“It was good.”

“It was fucking incredible.”

They sat there looking at each other for a few moments, and Casey’s tongue darted out to lick his lips nervously. Dan’s eyes lingered where it had passed, imagining running his own tongue across those lips, down that jaw, to the skin of that throat…he swallowed.

“Case…” he started, not really knowing what he would say, but Casey saved him the trouble, leaning in and capturing Dan’s lips with his own.

Eventually breathing became a priority again, and they pulled apart, just far enough to allow a little air between them. Dan leaned his head down and rested his forehead against Casey’s shoulder, running a hand up and down his chest idly.

“You know, you’re welcome to join me hiding in this room for the rest of our natural lives,” he invited, and he felt Casey’s lips curling up into a smile.

“I think I might take you up on that,” Casey said beside his ear.

Just before their lips met again and all thought rushed from his mind, Dan jotted down a mental note to send Jeremy a cake.


End file.
